Murderous Passions
The Turner Hahn/ Frank Morales Series Book 1
by B.R. Stateham
Genre: Detective Mystery
The first novel in the Turner Hahn/Frank Morales detective series. Two homicide detectives and old friends who take on the homicide cases no one else in the police department want to touch.
Two cops. Four homicides. One case involves a college professor and six thousand suspects. The second involves a dead farm girl, a dead gigolo, and a grieving housewife. The third is a jewel thief who likes to play with big caliber guns. The fourth involves a drug-crazed hoodlum with a killer's desire to challenge the world. It's just another working day for Detective Sergeants Turner Hahn and Frank Morales.
ONE
Murder is such an up-close and personal venue.
Especially if
the weapon of choice is a garrote made with piano wire. The
C-string. With wood handles carved with a craftsman’s precision to
fit the end of the wires for a firm, deadly grip.
Yes. A
garrote is a very intimate form of death. It requires strength.
Perseverance. Patience. It’s not like shooting someone with a
9mm. Stand ten feet away. Aim at the
chest. Pull the trigger and then walk away. The
garrote is not mundane and pedestrian. To kill with a garrote means
you must stand close to your victim. As close as two bodies
intertwined in a lover’s embrace. You must stand close enough to feel
the victim’s body heat. Smell the victim’s fear. Taste
the victim’s blood.
It’s messy.
The victim
doesn’t die by strangulation so much as by drowning. If the
proper technique is used the carotid artery is severed. Blood spurts
everywhere. The victim drowns in his own blood. A macabre
sense of retribution. Dying by drowning in your own blood.
Yes. Garroting
is very personal. Someone choosing this method meant the killer
wanted to enjoy the act of snuffing someone’s life out. Like a wine
connoisseur wanting to savor every passing second of a rare wine.
The victim was
Dr. Walter Holdridge. The Walter
Holdridge. Nobel prize winner in Physics and for the last dozen
years the academic catch for our own Anderson University. The victim
lay sprawled across a computer terminal in the basement of the campus’ Computer
Sciences building. Very dead. Very
messy. And promising to be a case which would bring an overwhelming
amount of bad publicity to the university. Publicity of the unwanted
kind.
Anderson
University is a synonym for ‘money.’ It’s in the
dictionary. Look it up in Webster’s and the number three definition
will say, “Anderson University–and lots of it.” The campus is six
blocks of downtown prime real estate. Sculptured lawns, big platters
of well-manicured flower beds, and red brick buildings of various architectural
styles which somehow blend together describes the school. It has ten
thousand students and each student is in the top three percent in the
nation. Smart kids. Rich kids. Money and lots of
smarts.
For a cop that’s
a bad combination.
B.R. Stateham is a fourteen-year-old boy trapped in a seventy-year-old body. But his enthusiasm and boyish delight in anything mysterious and/or unknown continue.
Writing novels, especially detectives, is just the avenue of escape which keeps the author’s mind sharp and inquisitive. He’s published a ton of short stories in online magazines like Crooked, Darkest Before the Dawn, Abandoned Towers, Pulp Metal Magazine, Suspense Magazine, Spinetingler Magazine, Near to The Knuckle, A Twist of Noir, Angie’s Diary, Power Burn Flash, and Eastern Standard Crime. He writes both detective/mysteries, as well as science-fiction and fantasy.
$20 Amazon
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I like the two men on the cover. Congrats on the release. How long did it take you to write your book?
ReplyDeleteBernie, it takes about a year to write a novel, give or take a few months. But it could go faster if you're writing a series and you get the first novel completed. There's a number of reasons for this to explain the phenomenon. But mostly, all the background info you need for your characters is already logged into your memory. Once that's done, all you have to do is work on the plot lines.
DeleteThe book sounds very intriguing.
ReplyDeleteI like the cover
ReplyDeleteI hope all three of you like the novel. Detectives Turner Hahn and Frank Morales or more than just detectives. They're friends . . . friends who share a very dry sense of humor. I'm hoping you'll rapidly come to know them as well. (fingers crossed)
ReplyDelete